Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
cpj.org
cpj.org
One possible explanation is that journalists have a much higher probability of being close to where the fighting is, than healthcare workers.
We don't know that reporters are rushing into danger or hanging out where the danger is going to be.
In fact, a lot of the "reporters" who we've been watching were never war reporters to begin with. Motaz, for instance was an aspiring travel photographer. Bisan was a filmmaker. Wael was the cheif of Al-Jazera in Gaza.
They're (most likely) not seeking out death and war, they're just reporting on the condition of their city, of their people.
It also ignores 75 years of history. CPJ stated this was the deadliest conflict for journalists in the past 30 years. Reporters Without Borders has accused Israel of intentionally targeting journalists. Human Rights Watch signed a letter stating the US needed to put pressure on Israel to stop killing journalists. Amnesty international says Israel must be investigated for the war crime of killing journalists.
The wikipedia article should be read as a starting point in understanding how extremely unreliable those numbers are, and how much it depend on how people define combatant and civilian.
So, as horrific as this war has been, I don't think the claim that this is "one of the the deadliest wars for civilians in general" holds up.
Part of the trouble is Israel can't prove the 12,000, and no one actually believes the Hamas figures are legitimate. But there are not better figures available for either number. So 1:1 for Gaza is the best we can estimate.
I don't think that is a true statement. Obviously it is bad for civilians in any war, but there are other conficts that have been much worse.
That's not actually true. The ratio is similar to other wars. Civilians die in war, they die a lot. War sucks. But Gaza is not unusually deadly compared to other wars.
In any case Israel is not conducting a war, they are conducting a massacre.
While the initial cause for war is obviously different, that does not justify war crimes.
I don't think western-brained folks realise how bad this looks to the rest of the world. For example to India, and the amount damage it does to the West's reputation.
I find it vanishingly unlikely that all the things that have happened to this man and his family are just tragic coincidence. He was clearly targeted.
Worth mentioning the IDF know where everyone in Gaza lives.
How is trying to storm a sovereign border peaceful? Pretty sure if a mob stormed any normal government border they would be shot.
I'd think they'd point their weapons at the ones actually storming not the journalists
Unless you're saying the IDF didn't point and just fired aimlessly in the march's general direction?
It’s not. But it’s not grounds for lethal force. Audible warnings, warning shots and non-lethal rounds were the right moves.
You can't possibly be serious.
Sure it is. But that’s not what you described—the border guards did not have enough information to conclude—as judge, jury and executioner—that they were trying to kill people.
The rate of journalists murdered in Gaza is much higher than other similar situations.
The Geneva convention requires citizens and journalists to not be targeted. [1]
Human Rights Watch [2] and Amnesty International [3] are reporting journalists are actively being targeted. Today, someone's phone can be tracked to target them.
The LA Times also had a piece outlining the journalists experiences [4]
[1] https://safety.rsf.org/appendix-i-protection-of-journalists-...
[2] https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israeli-strikes-on-journa...
[3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/lebanon-deadl...
[4] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-12-21/gaza-journa...
Not closer than the people actually doing the fight. Look at this plot: https://imgur.com/a/SWNSYOn
For the curve of journalists killed to bend this way, my rough estimates point it's necessary for the journalist have ~3x the odds of being targeted when compared to a Hamas fighter, or ~75x more when compared to random Gaza inhabitant (~75:1 vs. ~25:1 odds against random person). I posted in detail my estimation method here, but it got downvoted and now sits close to the bottom of this discussion, but you can read it here:
Part I: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39603300
Part II: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39603311
Part III (Python source code): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39603322
Would be interesting to see what the death rates for journalists, medics, soldiers, etc was in afghan war, iraq war, vietnam war, etc. I highly doubt any reaches 10%.
Hamas based their operations where conventional rules of war prohibit fire. That makes comparing casualty rates incredibly difficult. (To my knowledge, nobody else has done this so comprehensively. Though given its success, I expect it to be emulated. Which unfortunately means prohibitions on bombing hospitals, schools and places of worship are now obsolete.)
This apparent myth rubs me the same way as "there's no food because Hamas is stealing it" - really? All of it? For what purpose?
This is why the common rhetoric given from politicians and jingoists is that all of them are guilty and that no one is innocent. Using the same example, the workers and students of that school are de facto responsible because they allowed that school shooter to enter the school.
If there were multiple school shooters inside one school, and they were coördinating with other shooters across the country, that becomes a valid trade off. (In a classic solo shooter scenario, everyone you want to save is inside the building. There is no external context.) In the same way that a hijacked plane, post 9/11, is a valid target for being shot down.
Getting international opinion to turn against Israel.
Thats the way Hamas can survive this, getting enough pressure on Israel to make them stop.
Two, Israel is doing an incredible good job at putting the pressure on themselves right now.
I'm wondering by what metric do you define success.
Hardly seems worth it to me, but i guess you could argue that is success of a sort.
This has not stopped the IDF
Neither does the IDF by all available evidence.
Are these civilians not their families and communities? According to Hamas does death for their cause not earn you points for your glorious after life? You have to understand their beliefs to understand how they justify their actions. I have no doubt what they are doing is sensible to them else why would they do it?
I'm still waiting on a single shred of evidence to drop about the AP building from 2-3 years ago https://apnews.com/article/israel-middle-east-business-israe...
> Which unfortunately means prohibitions on bombing hospitals, schools and places of worship are now obsolete.
Even if Hamas was fighting from hospitals and schools that is not how this works. Israel would be required to give those schools and hospitals warning first which they have not been doing.
And assuming (incorrectly) that Israel was following the rules of engagement and giving the civilians warning, why are they hitting the refuge camps with 2000lb dumb bombs? Why not guided bombs?
I think you're generally wrong on the "they have not been doing" comment. Israel has been giving warnings, and those warnings were intentionally being ignored to maximize the damage to Israel's reputation. But if you have some comprehensive data here I'd be interested in seeing it.
From my observation the pattern has been Israel giving warnings/ordering evacuations with the response being "it can't be done" only to end with significantly more difficult conditions.
Israel did demand that the entirety of Northern Gaza be evacuated from civilians (including those "camps" you mention, more below, and including all those hospitals) which was again pushed back on as "impossible" or physically prevented by Hamas which in turn caused increased civilian casualty rates and the eventual almost full evacuation under significantly more difficult conditions.
The use of the terminology "refugee camps" is also confusing. Some of what the media refers to as "refugee camps" are permanent settlements, effectively cities, where the population consists of many 1948 refugees. Not what most people think about when they hear "refugee camps". As to why heavy bombs are used I'm not an expert but potentially to penetrate deeper and there might be other reasons.
All that said, I think it should be acknowledged that some of the methods Israel is using are likely to try and achieve some psychological advantage against the enemy. I don't think this that's necessarily a violation of international law given that warnings were given. It's within the realm of what I would call a military objective (demoralizing the enemy forces and destroying their infrastructure).
> From my observation
Well from Human Rights Watches observation:
> Human Rights Watch has not been able to corroborate them, nor seen any information that would justify attacks on Gaza hospitals. When a journalist at a news conference showing video footage of damage to the Qatar Hospital sought additional information to verify voice recordings and images presented, the Israeli spokesperson said, “our strikes are based on intelligence.” Even if accurate, Israel has not demonstrated that the ensuing hospital attacks were proportionate.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/14/gaza-unlawful-israeli-ho...
> I don't think
Again, giving a warning doesn't make it ok to bomb a school. Notice how the HRW quote mentions the attack not being "proportionate"? That's why I seek advice from the experts.
Yes, they have repeatedly dropped leaflets telling civilians to move to "safe" areas - and have repeatedly proceeded to bomb those areas.
> including those "camps" you mention
Like the one where an Israeli tank drove over inhabited tents?
Evacuated to where, exactly?
In my eyes, this is cast-iron proof that there is little concern on IDF side for civilian deaths. I do not see a plausible counter-argument
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/ho...
Interesting. I wonder whether genocide of all people seriously harmed by IDF since Oct 7 should also be added to the list of war crimes obsoleted in this recent war. It only makes sense, since all these people are enemies of the state of Israel with a very high probability of causing harm to the civilians living there in the future. Geneva conventions are really showing their age in the past few months.
There's often enough evidence to show an extremely likely deliberate killing (usually with weapons that Hamas doesn't have).
Journalists have been killed outside of the Gaza strip as well.
Just make your own informed opinion.
Furthermore, there have been so few western journalists on the ground because Israel (and Egypt) prevented them from entering, I think this prohibition alone should be considered unacceptable in the 21 century
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfvFpT-iypw (2007)
"The video shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad after they are apparently assumed to be insurgents. After the initial shooting, an unarmed group of adults and children in a minivan arrives on the scene and attempts to transport the wounded. They are fired upon as well. The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths ocurred."
(We may not have such detailed coverage for Gaza that we have for Baghdad, which is of course also caused by the lack of journalists, since who is dead can no longer report.)
"One Martyr Down: The Untold Story Of A Canadian Peacekeeper Killed At War" - https://legionmagazine.com/one-martyr-down-the-untold-story-...
A Canadian Army Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener was assassinated after the IDF "accidentally" bombed a United Nations post that he was posted at - soon after he reported war crimes that he witnessed the IDF doing.
1 - https://web.archive.org/web/20061010012455/http://www.canada...
A senior UN official, asked about the information contained in Maj. Hess-von Kruedener's e-mail concerning Hezbollah presence in the vicinity of the Khiam base, denied the world body had been caught in a contradiction.
"At the time, there had been no Hezbollah activity reported in the area," he said. "So it was quite clear they were not going after other targets; that, for whatever reason, our position was being fired upon.
"Whether or not they thought they were going after something else, we don't know. The fact was, we told them where we were. They knew where we were. The position was clearly marked, and they pounded the hell out of us."
---
This part states the area was being bombed prior to reports of Hezbollah activity in the area, so yes - the confusion will muddy it.
Nonetheless, he had recently reported IDF war crimes - and the IDF at minimum coincidentally was responsible for killing him; with this seemingly contradictory statement by a senior UN official.
> Furthermore, there have been so few western journalists on the ground because Israel (and Egypt) prevented them from entering, I think this prohibition alone should be considered unacceptable in the 21 century
Access to war zones has been limited commonly, IIRC, at least since the Iraq war. In Ukraine, journalists talk about government cooperation and, IIRC, approval.
If you are thinking about Vietnam, I think that has become more of the exception than the rule. (I think that in a free society, it should be the rule.)
I think the prohibition is wrong, but what do you think "real journalists" can offer people that isn't already being spread around? We are inundated with stories from this conflict; what is CNN going to add to the conversation? Most of these outlets are mouthpieces for their respective governments anyway, their point-of-view is predictable.
For example it could add informing a much wider span of the population and so influencing the governments?
I guarantee you that not everyone is inundated with stories from the conflict.
I agree with the observation that many of those outlets are mouthpieces for their respective government though.
Here are a few references to keep in mind when thinking about journalists working in Gaza (or you can think about Russia, Iran, North Korea, maybe China as being similar):
https://www.amnesty.ca/human-rights-news/gaza-hamas-must-end...
"The Gaza Strip is a particularly inhospitable territory for press freedom. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad harass and obstruct journalists suspected of collaborating with Israel," - https://rsf.org/en/country/palestine
"Gaza: Journalist facing prison term for exposing corruption in Hamas-controlled ministry" - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/02/gaza-journali...
"The Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza are arresting, abusing, and criminally charging journalists and activists who express peaceful criticism of the authorities. ... Both Palestinian governments, operating independently, have apparently arrived at similar methods of harassment, intimidation and physical abuse of anyone who dares criticize them. ... The media freedom group MADA documented 192 incidents in 2015 in which Palestinian authorities infringed on journalists’ right to free expression through summoning and interrogation, arrests, physical assault, detention, and, in Gaza, forbidding journalists from reporting on certain issues or stories. That was a 68 percent increase over 2014. The pattern of abuse that MADA reported, including beatings, torture, warnings to stop criticizing the government, and seizing passwords to search social media accounts, is consistent with the cases Human Rights Watch documented." - https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/30/palestine-crackdown-jour...
Isra Al-Mudalla, the head of foreign relations in Hamas’s Information Ministry said, "The security agencies would go and have a chat with these people. They would give them some time to change their message, one way or another." ... “Some of the journalists who entered the Gaza Strip were under security surveillance. Even under these difficult circumstances, we managed to reach them, and tell them that what they were doing was anything but professional journalism and that it was immoral.” - https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-admits-intimidating-fore... https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-government-spokesperson-we-de...
I feel that will take a long time to be able to actually look at the current events with perspective when we have more facts and less emotions. Right now we're seeing an information war and attempts to recruit media and control the narratives.
The thing I find most frustrating is media pretending to be neutral and unbiased where they are in fact always taking sides. To look at another conflict, western media takes the side of Ukraine while still pretending to just be covering the war (and we're mostly ok with that because nobody in the west is taking Russia's side anyways). I think the media should disclose their position and report facts. Instead they often repeat misinformation (and both sides here have similar claims), don't give good context, and take sides without disclosing that.
CNN is openly requiring a pro-Israeli bias in reporting for this war, and apparently before that.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/04/cnn-staff-pro-...
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/01/cnn-christiane-amanpour-...
Can you provide any examples for your claims otherwise?
In the current situation I don't think Hamas can exert very much control on the population, anyhow.
The handful of times that other journalists managed to enter, by the way, they confirmed what had been reported (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdIZmZr29L0)
I'm not sure what "confirmed what had been reported" really means here. The problem isn't that we're necessarily getting outright lies and fake news (I'm sure we're getting some), but that we're getting a very selective and emotional view into the horrors of war.
There's zero doubt that the impact of the war on Gaza is immense and so there's zero doubt that journalists can get heart wrenching stories of death and destruction out of it. As they can from any war.
Here are some thought experiments:
- Is there a way Israel could have defeated Hamas in a way where the media wouldn't be able to show any death and destruction? I believe the answer is no.
- Could the media have painted a very different picture of the war by changing focus? For sure.
There's just no way you're not getting a biased view here. I can tell any story with the same "raw reality" by selecting things that promote my cause, whatever it is. Where the bias is vs. some "nominal" ground reality is hard to say. If you look e.g. at the Ukraine-Russian war it's clear most western media is 100% biased towards Ukraine.
Objectively, Israel has caused a very high rate of civilian deaths, destruction of property, and is causing a near-famine or famine.
People argue that such outcomes are unavoidable, but they are happening. I think that the news media would be dishonest to paint a different picture than that.
Do you have examples?
(see also https://cpj.org/2024/03/attacks-arrests-threats-censorship-t...)
I don't see what's happening in Gaza as being culturally particular to the specific identity groups involved here. It's a very human situation and we are all at risk of falling into these kinds of collective behaviors.
[1] https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...
Also the community can't handle it, just look at the handful of comments we already have here.
I've posted about this many times, including quite a few explanations specific to the current topic:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 (Feb 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024 (Feb 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237176 (Feb 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947003 (Jan 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38749162 (Dec 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657829 (Dec 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 (Dec 2023)
Here are links to lots of past explanations I've given about the principles we use to decide these questions more generally:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
There are lots of comments in this thread that aren't flagged, so discussion isn't being prevented. It's true that a lot of the earlier comments were flagged, but that was (or should be) because they were flamebait. It's one of the downsides of internet commenting that the flameiest and most reflexive comments appear first in a thread—because those reactions are the quickest to flare up. Better, more reflective comments always take longer [1]. This goes 1000x for a topic like this one, unfortunately.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
-- original reply --
I've answered that several times in the links I listed; can you take a look and, if there's something specific I haven't addressed, let me know?
(I don't mean to be dismissive—it just takes a surprising amount of time to write those things and I can't do it at the moment.)
I'm pretty sure it's not an easy task to moderate HN. But I'm still surprised by the answer here.
Anything that goes against the status quo has a high chance of being flagged, I've seen this happen over and over and especially recently.
How do you reconcile HN's political neutrality and the fact that almost every overtly political story that hits the front page about certain subjects[1] are blatantly biased on one side?
For starters the situation is evolving more on that front. Every new action is a potential headline for palestine. On the other hand Israel's position is much more static: They want to prevent the slaughter on oct 7 from happening again, and are using force to do so. That hasn't changed. You can't make new headlines out of it.
Its probably also inherent to the fact that Israel is currently on the offensive, outside of its territory in an asymetrical urban conflict. The optics on that are always going to be bad for the state in Israel's position regardless of how justified it is. Urban conflict is always a bloody mess, same with asymetric conflicts.
When israel bombs a hospital that makes a great headline. Its easy to understand and verify - hospital used to be there, now it is not. Its emotional - everyone knows in normal circumstances hospitals are supposed to be off limits. The Israeli side is hard to fit into a headline - hospital bombed after it became a military target due to use by militants, in accordance with international law and the principles of porportionality and distinction. For starters that is a mouthful to be a headline. It lacks emotional punch because now we are talking about legalese not deaths of innocets. Its hard to understand - most non experts do not know what the doctrine of porportionality& distinction is. Even if they do, we do not know in the fog of war what israel knew when targeting it and if it was reasonable at the time. Even if we did, where precisely the line is can be controversially grey. Its not like there is a huge amount of case law on this. Determing if it was legal would probably require hundreds of pages of legal argumentation. Even then, there is a whole other question of if the line international law draws is the correct one morally, which you could write a book on. Its just very hard to put all that in a news article.
So i don't think it is HN's fault that most of these articles lean more anti-israel. Its just much easier to write about things from that perspective. It is much more black and white and requires much less nuance and context.
Israel has one of the most advanced military and intelligence apparatuses in the world. And Palestinians are some of the most surveilled humans in the world. Israel knows where they’re dropping the bombs and the demographics of the humans who live there. No amount of gaslighting the international community and unsophisticated normies changes this fact. There’s no excuse for these war crimes and it’s an utter shame that the West, led by America, continue to allow Israel to use the tragic events of October 7th as an excuse to murder innocent Palestinian civilians (most of whom are children).
We can only go by the articles that users submit, and then only the subset we see, which is a function of (a) randomness and (b) users bringing specific cases to our attention. If there's a bias in the stories that have made HN's front page, that bias is present in the underlying data (I mean this stream of articles) to begin with. Why might that be? Well, there are a lot of possible reasons and people would most likely dispute about those as much as they do about the underlying topic.
For what it's worth (which may not be much), all I can tell you is that we want deeply, and are trying hard, to be even-handed. At the same time, we're not going to apply some sort of mechanical both-sides balancing because, although it might make things superficially easier in the short term, I don't think it would be in the spirit of the site, and we don't do that about anything else.
The even-handedness I'm talking about is probably easier to notice in our moderation of comments, so far, than of the articles. I feel pretty confident that we've done a good job of that [1], more than I am about the articles. Perhaps that's because there have been thousands of comments, but only a handful of frontpage articles, on the topic. One consistent lesson of HN is that you can't draw general conclusions from a handful of datapoints. It takes a lot more than that before reliable patterns show up.
What matters to me is that there be principles underlying the moderation and that these get applied equally. This isn't fully achievable because there's always interpretation involved—we don't get every call right. But I think the principles are the right ones for HN (I've explained what these are in the links mentioned above), and I'm always open to hearing arguments about how to apply them more even-handedly. When people make a fair point, such as xyzelement did about the submitted URL of the OP (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39621225), we're happy to change something. Another example that sticks in my mind is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146630 from a few weeks ago. That was about title, not URL, but the principle is the same.
I don't know how satisfactory this answer can possibly be but I hope it's at least clear that I hear you and care about the question.
[1] That is, when people break HN's rules in the comments, such as by posting flamebait or snark or personal attack, we flag and/or reply and/or ban irrespective of what the commenter is for or against. It might not appear that way to many readers who have strong passions on a topic, but it's not as hard to do as one might assume, especially after 10 years of practice.
With many social networks, we have many platforms to discuss politics directly. IMHO, HN should keep to tech and not politics, with an exception of politics related to tech (eg. EU trying to destroy e2e encryption,... again,... government hacks, etc).
We have literally everywhere else to pick sides and point fingers.
"colour-blindness is racism" is postmodernist garbage. Same for "everything is politics", a derivative of the same impulse.
You aren't employed to discuss the relative merits of the Hutus or the Tutsis, whether they're at peace or at war!
Using the common meaning of "politics", it's very easy to sort the majority of subjects into "politics" and "non-politics".
Also, there is very little politics practiced without technology, so it can be harder to make it inextricable.
What's a political post? What's "regular news"? And where do you draw the line? If not interested, you can just move on and ignore. There's plenty of AI articles all over the front page.
Maybe it's not a matter of who we are, but who we should be?
Easier said than done? Oh yeah, we're soft and lazy from a life diet high on - literally - coconvenience.
Put another way, when we collectively decide "we can't talk about X or Y" the control of that topic gets outsourced: outsourced to "leaders" who evidently are less capable.
In short, yes there is risk. But the alternatives consistently qualify as insanity.
HN readers and contributors at least try to think of themselves as the grown-ups in the room. So, by having conversations about contentious topics in a civilized and respectful way, we learn things.
You are perhaps obligated to take an interest in your own democracy, although that doesn't mean you're obligated to inject it into your workplace and every facet of life.
You are by no means obligated to take an interest in wars on other continents.
Especially not to subject your poor coworkers to your Gell-Man Amnesia-ridden opinions on it!
The Americans who helped stop Hitler would like to have a word with you.
There is another interesting and delicate conversation about what that person thought about Gaza and about Israeli Jews, and where those ideas came from. He posted on Reddit that Hamas's stated intent to destroy Israel - where 7 million Jews live - would not count as genocide. That is a higher percentage than the extermination of 6 million European Jews in the Holocaust, when there were more Jews alive than now.
He based this on the belief that Israel is a US and UK colony, which is hard to take seriously either literally (since it isn't) or figuratively (since none of the many non-middle-eastern waves of Jewish refugees came from the US or UK).
He also had a deeply held belief that the violence killing 1% of Palestinians in Gaza IS a genocide (and I think it's safe to assume that he fully accepted Hamas's claims that 30k people have died, and fully rejected IDF's claims that 12k of those were Hamas militants). So deeply held that he burned himself to death over it.
To me, the inconsistency of holding those two beliefs so strongly at the same time is a sign of antisemitism believed more deeply than I personally believe in anything. And that contradiction does not survive a moment's rational thought - to me at least. Which makes me assume that someone whose profession is built around thinking rationally was simply unable to think rationally about the Israel-Gaza conflict and see the inherent asymmetry of what he was saying.
So I think there is a discussion here. Not about whether he was right that the devastation in Gaza amounts to a genocide, or right about whether democracy is evil, or right about whether America is evil. But the limits of rationality compared to how engineers usually think about themselves, and whether we are more or less susceptible than anyone else when it comes to online echo chambers.
And it is incredibly hard to have that conversation without getting into flame wars. Or projecting our personal beliefs about the Israel/Palestine conflict to the point that it prevents useful discourse.
That's not just Hamas's claim, that's the UN's claim, Amnesty international has this claim. There's plenty of independent thirds parties which hold this claim. The same cannot be said for the 12k militants claim, for which the idf has supplied no evidence, and is not repeated by independent third parties.
And beyond that, I don't think the belief that killing 1% of a population and displacing and injuring many more has much to do with any feelings towards any race. If the Belgians came into my country and killed 1% of everyone, I'd be pretty miffed, but that doesn't mean I have an ethnic hatred of Belgians.
If the claim you're making is "we should not bring up the fact that the Hamas' stated intent is to kill and/or deport every Jew in Israel because they don't have the capacity to do that"... I mean, I've seen variations of that claim before, but I still find it baffling.
(Standards disclaimers apply, the Hamas having genocidal intent doesn't justify the IDF's war crimes, etc.)
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/26/1234005058/what-we-know-about...
Here's a wider review from the Committee to Protect Journalists that predates the current conflict: https://cpj.org/reports/2023/05/deadly-pattern-20-journalist...
They talk about the existence of Pegasus software, and they talk about the fact that generically, it has been used in the world to track journalists.
They don't actually cite a single example of a Palestinian, much less a journalist, being tracked through Pegasus. Likewise, they say it "appears" that this data is then used for targeting but no indication as to what makes it appear that way.
The article is basically "spyware exists" - and the rest is pure speculation about how it could possibly be used but no evidence (mentioned) that it's used that way.
I've changed the link from https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/gaza-journalists-targeted-sp... (the submitted URL) to https://cpj.org/2024/03/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-..., which it points to. I've also changed the title to reflect the link change.
[1]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/11/devices-o...
There's the whole movement to 'not support any Democrat candidate's during the primaries, which is wavering the non-committed around 8-15%.
Aside sending a vote message to Biden, I'm powerless to do more.
Honestly, the US govt needs to quit selling/giving/loaning weaponry to Israel. Won't solve the problem, but at least we wouldn't be supporting it.
I try to focus on problems I can do something about. This ain't one of them.
What I care about now is that we quit supporting Israel's own holocaust. Just because they had something horrible happen in the 1940's, doesn't mean they get "One Free Holocaust Ticket".
Let them fend for themselves. Sanction them. Run battleships in the Mediterranean to break the Gaza blockade. Basically we should put them in the proverbial time-out corner until they can behave like civilized adults.
Look up how Arabs have historically treated Jews living on "their" land, and the various expulsions of Jews from modern Arab states. It paints a GRIM picture of a post-umbilical cord Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world
> Traditionally, Jews in the Muslim world ... were subjected to dhimmi status. They were afforded relative security against persecution, provided they did not contest the varying inferior social and legal status imposed on them under Islamic rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Musl...
> In 1945, there were between 758,000 and 866,000 Jews living in communities throughout the Arab world. Today, there are fewer than 8,000.
I'm not taking a position on what the US should do in this post, but withdrawing support for Israel is definitely going to lead to horrific violence all the same.
The fact that the attack happened right as relations were about to normalise with both Turkey and Saudi Arabia is all you need as evidence.
Judgment not on group basis, but individual basis with massive surveillance as basis for review..
Could send the extremists of both sides to the bad place for bonus points.
To me it seems more like a nation state fighting a terrorist group, with heavy civilian losses.
If you occupy territories for decades, with notable differences in the rights of those occupied, you get an insurgency. To me, "terrorism" doesn't really describe the situation well. There have certainly been specific incidents that fit that label, but plenty that look a lot more like plain old rebellion. There have also been acts from the Israelis that could be looked at as terroristic, if you subscribe to the definition of using violence and intimidation for political gain.
Besides, does it matter what you call it? It's a war for all intents and purposes.
Every war/invasion/special military operation is seemingly a "The good guys (me) against the bad guys/terrorists (you)" conflict, and if that's not war, I'm not sure what is.
"only" is used here to diminish the suffering of the Gazan people. Israel has had Gaza under a brutal blockade, across air, land and sea. They control everything that enters or leaves, and infamously were so cruel they counted the calories entering Gaza [0] [1]. Israel even claims control of the air over Gaza, and prevents civilians from collecting rainwater [2] [3] [4].
Israel has been enforcing collective punishment for decades - they want that land, and they want it only for themselves.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-counted-calorie-require...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/world/middleeast/israel-c...
[2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occu...
[3] https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2016-06-22/ty-article/.premi...
[4] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/3/10/debunking-some-...
I quote from MSNBC "Despite pleas from the United Nations and human rights groups, Israel has maintained a land, air and sea blockade on Gaza since 2007 that has had a devastating effect on Palestinian civilians."
How do you rule if you control nothing? all the utilities are controlled by Israel. Travel, nope, controlled by Israel. Exports, nope, controlled by Israel. What are they ruling?
Israel created Hamas to weaken the Palestinian Authority - which itself is severely corrupt and complacent. People are seeking a better life. How else do you think Trump got elected? was he the better candidate? (and yes, I did just conflate Trump and Hamas)
And then the same vagueness is the same tactics used by the most well funded, the most sophisticated propaganda machine ever - to make people think being against the actions of their current Israeli government, e.g. war crimes they're committing and have been committing, is anti-Semitism.
Your argument seems to be: it's okay to do terrorist things if someone makes you. But that's still terrorism.
There's evidence many of them were killed by friendly fire, to avoid capture and the need for hostage swaps. See:
https://thecradle.co/articles-id/18526
https://www.oct7factcheck.com/oct7factcheck/Friendly-fire-Is...
I think the Hannibal Directive is not great, but at the same time the Israelis wouldn't have committed those acts had the terrorists not crossed into Isreal intending to do terrorist things.
It's terrorism whether you invade to kidnapp civilians or to murder them, and they're was plenty of civilian murdering happening that day as well.
Even if Isreal goaded them into doing it to justify genocide, it's still Hamas who decided to do the terrorism.
What I'm REALLY saying is that it's inappropriate for HN. It's a human story, for sure, but...
Many journalists appear to have been deliberately targeted: killed by snipers, bombed while sleeping in their own homes, or hit by airstrikes while travelling.
> Around 10% of Gaza's journalists have been killed versus 2.5% of healthcare workers.
These figures are insane! The number of journalists killed crossed the threshold where Gaza journalists can be declared officially decimated, according to the historical definition of the term as 1/10 killed[1]. I noticed if we plot the journalist killings against general population killings in Gaza, the graph deviates from an approximately straight line that might be expected if journalists were merely being killed as a result of "collateral damage" amidst indiscriminated bombings, and I got nerd sniped[2] by the question: Do data give any clues Israel purposefully targets journalists, beyond the large values[3]?
After spending some days grappling with it, I think the shape of data supports it, as displayed here:
Graph: https://imgur.com/a/SWNSYOn Journalist killing data: https://pastebin.com/S1ykpSMR (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...) General population killing data: https://pastebin.com/EGq6cgH8 (from https://www.ochaopt.org/)
Discussion:
Looking at the plot of the ratio of journalists killed by israeli forces over all killed, it appears to be slightly decreasing over time instead of keeping constant. My working hypothesis is, as journalists are dispoportionally targeted, their numbers get comparatively depleted over time, making slightly harder to kill more journalists. This can be modelled as an urn problem[4], when each ball colour has different odds of being drawn, in addition to being present in different numbers. But instead of black/white balls, we have people, and instead of being drawn out from an urn, they are drawn out of life, by being shot at[5], shelled, bombed, run over by bulldozers[6], et cetera. The urn problem with different weights on each color can be modeled by a noncentral hypergeometric distribution[7], either Wallenius' noncentral hypergeometric distribution[8], for the case where balls are sampled one by one in such a way that there is competition between the balls, or Fisher's noncentral hypergeometric distribution[9], for the case where the balls are sampled simultaneously or independently of each other.
There's some disagreement on published numbers of killed journalists. For example, the Comitee to Protect Journalists counts around 90 jornalists killed[10]. The Euro-Med Monitor over 130[11]. I'm not sure about the causes of this disagreement, but I suspect is due to who is counted as journalist, only people that actualy write reports and give face and voice to established news sources, or also their supporting crews (camera men, fixers, drivers...) and freelancers. In doubt I used data extracted from a table given by wikipedia[12], that is closer to the more conservative estimate given by CPJ and lists individual names and sources. The pattern of journalists killed each day in the dataset (1, 3, 1, 3, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 5, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 6, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1, 3, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 3, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1) indicates they're taken down mostly one at a time, and even large individual massacres, like the recent flour bag massacre[13], kills less than 1/10000 of the total population from Gaza Strip each, so Wallenius' distribution should approximate it better. In fact, it appears it is more likely for journalists to be killed together with their families at home than together with other journalists doing fieldwork, as we can infer by reading the entries in the description field of the table. For the figures on the whole strip, I collected daily reports published in the site of United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and scraped some barcharts[14].
1/3 (continues)
I think this assumption is wrong. Journalists are known to try to get the most shocking photos and reports. I would expect their rates of injury compared to random Joes in similar situations to be similar to that of people doing extreme sports compared to people doing recreational sports.
For example, iirc Palestine health authority reports the names of all the civilians[0] that have been killed. I think the number is something like 30k. I frequently wonder if that number is simply exaggerated, as it would be in Palestine's interest to do so. However, if the number is supported by a corresponding list of the names of individuals, I would think the Israeli intelligence services would be incentivised and capable of refuting a significant enough number of false claims[1] to cast serious doubt upon the claimed number of civilian deaths.
To my knowledge, Israel has not done so, and so I don't doubt the number too much.
[0] As noted, it is extremely challenging to pin down whether or not someone is 'Hamas'. I assume Palestine is reporting all deaths as civilian, in the same way Israel seems to report them all as combatant.
[1] whether it is an individual that does not exist, perished prior to Oct 7. '23, or is still alive.
But the latest reported death toll is over 30k, 22k of whom are women and children. Another 10k or more are missing and presumed dead. If about one-third of the missing are adult men, matching the ratio of deaths, then about 12k adult men are dead or missing.
Is it plausible that Israel is so precise that all the adult men they've killed were Hamas fighters?
[1]. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
Unfortunately it seems to be in Palestine's (and even Hamas) best interest to be truthful, in this case
But the uncertainty here probably is dominated by uncertainty in the inputs. I used the lower estimates for journalists deaths, about 90 on 01/03. But some organizations publish figures as high as 130. The uncertainty in total deaths also high, I would not be surprised if 1.5-2x higher, given all missing people.
The best fit I got over the search grid had an effective journalist population of 155 and odds ratio of 75:1. As the data is noisy, I took the top 20 matches to have some idea of error intervals, and got ranges of 135 - 205 effective population and 51 - 96 odds ratio. The odds ratio is larger than our estimate for Hamas militants, indicating that in fact Israeli forces are busier targeting journalists than Hamas militants. Even if we assume the total kill counts are underestimates, given all people missing under the rubble and lack of proper rescue work due to targeting of rescue crews, say, adding a xs = [2*x for x in xs] line after the first definition of xs, to double the total counts, we still get killing odds for journalists equal or greater than for militants.
[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(punishment) [2]. https://xkcd.com/356/ [3]. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/global-media-outle... [4]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urn_problem [5]. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68445973 [6]. https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6202/Israeli-tanks-hav... [7]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncentral_hypergeometric_dist... [8]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallenius%27_noncentral_hyperg... [9]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_noncentral_hypergeo... [10]. https://cpj.org/2024/03/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-... [11]. https://twitter.com/EuroMedHR/status/1761121386347516095 [12]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_... [13]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Rashid_humanitarian_aid_inc... [14]. https://www.ochaopt.org/ [15]. https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/generated/scipy.s... [16]. https://www.instagram.com/byplestia/p/Cz9MfelKk3x/ [17]. https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/516373.aspx [18]. https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-said-to-believe-israel-kill...
2/3 (Continues)
import csv
from collections import Counter
from datetime import date, timedelta
from itertools import accumulate, islice
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from scipy.stats import nchypergeom_wallenius
from statistics import linear_regression
def batched(iterable, n):
# batched('ABCDEFG', 3) --> ABC DEF G
if n < 1:
raise ValueError('n must be at least one')
it = iter(iterable)
while batch := tuple(islice(it, n)):
yield batch
def dateab(a, b):
# Lists dates from day a to day b.
i = 0
while (c := a + timedelta(days = i)) <= b:
yield c.isoformat()
i += 1
def reader(file):
with open(file, newline='', encoding='utf-8') as csvfile:
for row in csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter=';', quotechar='"'):
yield row[0:2]
def sum_absdiff(iter1, iter2):
# Compute absolute differences sum between vectors, as error measure.
return sum(abs(x - y) for x, y in zip(iter1, iter2))
days = list(dateab(date(2023, 10, 7), date(2024, 3, 1)))
weeks = [e for e in batched(days, 7) if len(e) == 7]
total_killings = [(d, int(n)) for d, n in islice(reader('gs_cummulative_total_killings.csv'), 1, None)]
d = dict(total_killings)
xs = list(max(d.setdefault(e, 0) for e in week) for week in weeks)
journalist_killings = [t[0] for t in reader('gaza_strip_journalists_killed.csv')]
c = Counter(journalist_killings)
ys = list(accumulate(sum(c.setdefault(e, 0) for e in week) for week in weeks))
slope, intercept = linear_regression(xs, ys, proportional=True)
fitted = [slope * x + intercept for x in xs]
print('Linear regression parameters: slope =', slope, ';', 'intercept =', intercept, '\n')
M = 2375259 # 2022 population estimate (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip)
ns = [i for i in range(1, 1200) if i % 5 == 0]
odds = [i for i in range(1, 100) if i % 3 == 0]
candidate_store = {}
for n in ns:
for odd in odds:
L = []
for x in xs:
r = nchypergeom_wallenius(M, n, x, odd).mean()
L.append(r)
candidate_store[(n, odd)] = L[:]
best_wallenius_fit = min(candidate_store, key= lambda e: sum_absdiff(candidate_store[e], ys))
print('n, odds (best Wallenius fit):', best_wallenius_fit, '\n')
top_20 = sorted(candidate_store, key= lambda e: sum_absdiff(candidate_store[e], ys))[:20]
print('Top 20 (n, odds):', top_20, '\n')
top_20_ns = [e[0] for e in top_20]
top_20_odds = [e[1] for e in top_20]
print('Top 20 n variation in range:', min(top_20_ns), '-', max(top_20_ns))
print('Top 20 odds variation in range:', min(top_20_odds), '-', max(top_20_odds))
fig, ax1 = plt.subplots()
ax1.plot(xs, ys, label='Available data')
ax1.plot(xs, fitted, label='Linear regression fit')
ax1.plot(xs, candidate_store[best_wallenius_fit], label='Wallenius\' distribution fit')
ax1.set_xlabel('General population (source: ochaopt.org)')
ax1.set_ylabel('Journalists (source: wikipedia.org)')
ax1.set_title('Cummulative killings by Israeli forces in Gaza Strip\n2023-10-07 to 2024-03-01')
ax1.legend()
plt.show()
Python 3.11.8 (main, Feb 7 2024, 00:00:00) [GCC 13.2.1 20231011 (Red Hat 13.2.1-4)] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license()" for more information.
========== RESTART: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ==========
Linear regression parameters: slope = 0.00344597608865967 ; intercept = 0.0
n, odds (best Wallenius fit): (155, 75)
Top 20 (n, odds): [(155, 75), (160, 72), (145, 84), (165, 69), (170, 66), (150, 78), (175, 63), (140, 87), (135, 93), (150, 81), (185, 60), (140, 90), (180, 60), (190, 57), (195, 54), (200, 54), (135, 96), (180, 63), (205, 51), (185, 57)]
Top 20 n variation in range: 135 - 205
Top 20 odds variation in range: 51 - 96Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2024/israel...
https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2024/02/over-75-of-all-jour...
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/world/middleeast/30embed....
I'm neither way on the conflict but want to correct some of your arguments assumptions that lead your conclusion astray.
But yes, the overall cost in human lives was higher for the Soviet Union than for any other country or federation.
How have these things changed, and how have the changes affected the number of journalists killed? The changes could reduce the number.
My point is, we need much less speculation and possibilities, and much more credible fact. CPJ provides some credible fact.
The claim is Israel is killing people in bright blue vests marked PRESS and in cars with PRESS written across the sides and roof.
How many journalists did the US kill in 20 years of OEF/OIF?
Besides, not sure Israel would allow them to import the uniforms.
2) Asymmetry between forces.
3) No escape route.
Each atomic bomb on its own probably killed more than 69 journalists.
"Of the 715, the Syrian regime was responsible for the killing of 553 journalists, including five children, one woman, five foreign journalists, and 47 journalists who died due to torture, while 24 journalists were killed at the hands of Russian forces."
https://snhr.org/blog/2023/05/03/on-world-press-freedom-day-...
Irrespective of which side you support, Hamas is notorious for colocating themselves among civilians. An elevated civilian death count, including journalists is to be expected.
However, the numbers being THIS high in this short a time is alarming and tragic.
I despise Hamas, but this claim is disingenuous propaganda (by the leaders who make it, not the parent who repeats it):
First, Hamas is 'notorious' for it because it's endlessly repeated by their enemies. That rhetoric doesn't make anything true. (Haven't we had the Internet long enough that people know it well by now?)
Second, Hamas is an assymetric, irregular force, and assymetric forces cannot operate bases or fight open battles anywhere; they all must blend in with civilians (or hide in wilderness); it's just the nature of being that kind of force:
They have personal weapons, mostly. They cannot bring their rifles and RPGs to fight a fully capable modern state military's tanks and planes on an open battlefield - would you? The modern state military would kill them all immediately; it would be pointless. Might as well surrender.
Therefore the assymetric force cannot hold ground, and therefore cannot build bases separate from civilians: If they had identifiable bases, the state military would erradicate them in minutes.
The laws of war require militaries to distinguish soldiers from civilians, but I wonder if that is written by 'symmetric' forces and to their advantage. For assymetric forces, they might as well have bullseyes on their uniforms.
Let's not start accusing each other. Drop the BS.
> using human shields (directly by putting military infrastructure in civilian ones or indirectly by not distinguishing themselves)
That doesn't mean they are using human shields (and it doesn't mean they are not): Asymetric forces need to blend into the environment - the mountains, the city, etc. In the city, that means blending into the civilian population - it doesn't require any intent to use them as shields (but they still could intend it - they even could intend to cause civilian deaths to drive world opinion).
> The death of human shields is their responsibility, and their alone
The asymetric force is at least partly to blame for the deaths of civilians, but that doesn't excuse the 'symmetric' force (is there a better term?) from all laws of war and basic human morality. They can still minimize civilian death and still follow rules of proportionality - Israel can't justify nuking the Gaza strip because Hamas is hiding among civilians.
Being indistinguishable from civilians (blending in) is exactly using civilian as a shield -- the opponent can't identify you and can't kill everyone who looks like you
> They can still minimize civilian death
Arguably Israel does it with fairly low civilian: combatant death ratio
Most people think killing thousands of people to eliminate a terrorist group is a trade-off that should be made which baffles my mind. Where do we live? No human life can be weighted upon anything else.
I found this interview pretty thought provoking. I think it is still pro-Israel, but it provides a view of Hamas's strategy that I haven't seen anywhere else.
Basically, what I think Hamas leadership was thinking was to mirror the Hezbollah-Israel conflict from, what, 10 years ago, on a much bigger scale. According to this CIA officer, Hamas had 30,000 soldiers ready to engage in fighting with Israel in an urban environment, and the initial terror attack was trying to sucker the Israelis into rushing in and suffering huge casualties. Not 30,000 soldiers in uniforms and formations to your point, but nonetheless a large force. (This part starts at about 7:30 into the video).
According to the intel officer in the interview, Israel did NOT rush in, and is engaging in effective counterattacks per the Intelligence officer. I understand everyone thinks the press is owned by Israel, but in the failed conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon there was plenty of stories about the Israeli army failing.
I have not heard those stories. Just desperate stories from the Palestinian side, which tells me the Israelis are being quite effective.
Hamas is embedded with civilians by default: the Gaza strip is stuffed full of people, it has very high population density due to the insane 8 children-per-woman population expansion of the Palestinians over the last 60-70 years.
According to all the experts I read, Israel rushed in without a political outcome planned. All warfare is a tool to achieve political outcomes (unless the outcome was to drive Palestinians out of Gaza or just destroy as many people and buildings as possible). All warfare ends only with a stable political solution; otherwise it continues indefinitely; an example is Afghanistan, where the US failed to achieve a stable political solution and so the war never ended - unfortunately the Taliban have acheived a stable political solution, to some degree.
> I have not heard those stories. Just desperate stories from the Palestinian side, which tells me the Israelis are being quite effective.
I agree that the Israeli military has spared itself the hubris and casualities they experienced when they attacked Hezbollah around 20 years ago.
But we still see stories criticizing the Israeli military, and we don't hear desperate stories from Hamas, only from civilians. A military killing civilians isn't accomplishing anything. The question is, are they being effective against Hamas and in establishing some desireable political outcome?
> it has very high population density due to the insane 8 children-per-woman population expansion of the Palestinians over the last 60-70 years.
Also from being unable to leave.
Gaza is a mafia state under control by Hamas, who likely control all aid coming into the country and certainly the Iranian military funding.
Israel seems to apply a 10x minimum response to any Israeli casualties over the years. This attack is well above the 10x number already.
And remember, the Israelis do not completely surround Gaza. Egypt is complicit in closing the walls of the prison on Gaza, and Egypt I'm told hates the Palestinians more than Israel does. I wonder why this is, Egypt did manage/oversee Gaza for 25 years and I guess said "no thanks".
AFAIK, it's not like the Sinai peninsula is some valuable land, I think Egypt has room to take in Palestinian refugees. They simply refuse to do it. I have not gotten any good reason why they hate them. I guess the Lebanese hate their Palestinian enclave. It is clear the Arab world doesn't care about the Palestinians, and a common brotherhood of Islam doesn't carry weight.
> this claim is disingenuous propaganda
> Hamas is an assymetric, irregular force, and assymetric forces cannot operate bases or fight open battles anywhere; they all must blend in with civilians
Is the hangup on the word "notorious"? Because you appear to first claim the notion of colocation to be propaganda before explaining why it's also a logistical inevitability.
Hamas does a lot of bad things; they still are 'notorious'; but this thing is just fundamental asymmetric operations, at least generally speaking.
> this claim is disingenuous propaganda
> Hamas is an assymetric, irregular force, and assymetric forces cannot operate bases or fight open battles anywhere; they all must blend in with civilians
Are you listening to yourself here? Pure cognitive dissonance
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39626896
Still, you got it wrong: It wasn't cognitive dissonance, but miscommunication. I'm not trying to score a point; I'm trying to say that jumping to conclusions - despite it's popularity these days - often yields wrongness, and we all are especially prone to it when we are emotionally charged. Curiosity, as a policy and rule, is an effective prophylactic against screwing yourself. :)
Is it???
If you can't tell innocent people from legit targets... rethink the approach?
Here is my reasoning: they hide in civilian clothes, okay let's not shoot civilians. They hide in hospitals, okay let's not bomb hospitals. They use civilian buildings, okay let's not bomb civilian buildings.
They use civilians as shields... let's not shoot the shields.
How is that unreasonable?
What can be done when Israel is willing to break the rules of engagement?
This is not a moderation scolding—I'm just trying to prune the top-heaviest subthreads.
So what is it then? The plausible deliberate targeting of the journalists mentioned? Or just, plain old indiscriminate bombing? Either ways, shame.
please dont let this site drift further away
If you want more explanation, see my post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618973 earlier in this thread, and the links back from there. If you read some of those and have a question I haven't already answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
[1] I say that because we're conscious of what the principles governing this are, and it's possible to apply them fairly consistently.